A suspected serial killer has been charged with the murders of three women in Southern California nearly 50 years ago.

Kimberly Fritz, 18, Velvet Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Rodriguez, 21, were all strangled to death in 1977, but investigators ran out of clues at the time.

“Although it was believed that these three crimes were indeed connected, the leads were inconclusive and investigators were unable to identify the person responsible for these gruesome murders,” Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said at a press conference this week.

Warren Luther Alexander of Diamondhead, Mississippi, who was working as a long-distance truck driver at the time, was linked to the murders when his DNA matched the crime scenes after it was uploaded to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a national database, last year.

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A suspected serial killer has been charged with the murders of three women in Southern California nearly 50 years ago. (Ventura County District Attorney’s Office)

Alexander was extradited Tuesday from North Carolina, where he was in custody and charged with a 1992 murder.

The Californian victims were all murdered between late May 1977 and December 1977.

“These murders may have happened 47 years ago, but the investigators from the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, the investigators from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Cold Case Unit, the officers and detectives in Port Hueneme and Oxnard never gave up. They never gave up seeking justice for these three victims and their loved ones and their families,” Nasarenko said.

“Just because the case is unsolved doesn’t mean it should ever be forgotten.”

All three women were sex workers and frequented a shopping mall and motels in the greater Los Angeles area that were known for prostitution at the time, officials said.

Alexander is being held without bail.

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Kimberly Fritz, 18, Velvet Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Rodriguez, 21, were all strangled to death in 1977, but investigators ran out of clues at the time. (Ventura County District Attorney’s Office)

Officials said they believed he may be a suspect in other unsolved murders in California and other states that he committed while working as a truck driver from the 1970s through the 1990s.

“We believe there may be additional victims both locally and in other states,” Nasarenko said. “The investigation is ongoing and we will follow up on any leads that come to light. The case is far from over.”

Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko says Alexander is suspected of other unsolved murders across the country. (Ventura County District Attorney’s Office)

He was arrested in North Carolina in 2022 for the 1992 killing of 29-year-old Nona Cobb.

Alexander grew up in Oxnard, California, where Sanchez was killed in September 1977, and moved back there in the 1970s.

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“For Warren Luther Alexander, once a fugitive from justice, the day of reckoning has finally come in Ventura County,” Nasarenko said.

FOX 5 and the Associated Press contributed to this report.